Interview: Two-Time NBA Champ Kenny Smith Swears "NBA Baller Beats" Will Make You a Better Player

I'm a first-generation video guy. At 46 years old, I'm you know, first generation. So I've seen from "Tennis," with the "BLIP. BLIP." [laughing] where you just hit it across, to this, where with the Kinect, and it now senses your body and a real basketball. So I've done everything in between, from the Pac-Man to Donkey Kong, all of that.

You know, and I have teenaged kids, so my house has all of those games inside of it. You know, from the Call of Duties to the NBA 2K, it has everything, you know, all those games are floating in my house. And they always like to bring me along because they know they can beat me.

What about NBA Jam?

Oh yeah! I was in it! I was an actual person in the game, so of course, I love that game. I used to—let me tell you this: that used to be my fake date. I would always, you know, I'm about to go somewhere on a date, and I would take the person to a place that had that game and be like, "Oh, while we're waiting on the movie, let's do this," and then, "Oh, I'm in the game!" [laughing].

I'm in the new version now, I'm in it now. So all the kids, I always get tweets about me being in the game…and so I always get like, "You don't miss in this game!" I'm like, "I never missed in real life either." [laughing] That's my line and I'm sticking to it.

You're playing a lot of golf.

I'm probably more—I play golf, I'm not great. Now I'm always the guy—I'm getting shot up all the time, you know? But like I said, the games that I play are a lot more interactive. And then now, because of the way things kind of go cyclical, all of the old school games that kids think now that are new, they come back, and so I know how to play all of those, and you know, from even—even like my son had never seen Donkey Kong, really. You know, he's like, and I'm playing Donkey Kong, and they have all the different versions of it, but I'm able to get to three or four stages without even trying, and he's—"How do you know this game?" I'm like, "Oh, I've never seen it before either!"

I make up stories. But it's kind of cyclical, like all these retro games are now hot again.